miércoles, 14 de octubre de 2015

Virginia Butler

After thinking of the concept of «vulnerability» by Judith Butler I
have come to realise that there is definitely huge similarities in how they
both, Butler and Virginia Woolf, conceive the point from which the reaction
against social impositions starts, a point that can initially be seen as (and
actually it is) a flaw but is charged with possibilities from which we can
begin to build the material of such a reaction. It is something like the
critique is contained within the flaw and so naturally from the critique (and
then from the flaw) we erect the reaction.

In Undoing gender Butler
says:

«To understand
gender as a historical category, however, is to accept that gender, understood
as one way of culturally configuring a body, is open to a continual remaking,
and that 'anatomy' and 'sex' are not without cultural framing».

Well, I am very
sure she would agree in applying this not only to gender/anatomy/sex but to any
of our social components or composition. Actually, Butler is saying that we are ‘social
construction’ to a great extent and that gender/anatomy/sex are not least on (or
out of) this respect. And, beyond, she thinks that reaction against that situation
does not start from a rational reflection but from the sense of vulnerability
that results of the way we are made by outer impositions without controlling it
at all. It starts as a «disposition of ourselves outside ourselves [which]
seems to follow from bodily life, from its vulnerability and its exposure» (Precarious life. The powers of mourning and
violence.). After this, perhaps rational reflection (and organized
reaction) comes. So we do not have to avoid or restrain «vulnerability» but to
explore it, and do it against the mechanism that generated it.

Going to
Virginia Woolf and particularly to To the
lighthouse, we see the day by day of a group of people living their social role
and the internal uneasiness it generates in the face of their expectations and
desires. Not all of them aim to conceal that restlessness at all, but we can
see two feminine main characters doing the best efforts in this sense (adult masculine
main characters are perhaps more established in the part they play, without
trying to challenge or to explore it / they complain about things of course,
but they do not take action, as if the world has to make its movement for a
change and they had done enough already): Mrs. Ramsay and Lily react from their
vulnerabilities. In the case of Mrs. Ramsay, when she feels her familiar world
is under threat (often because of the blindness and self-indulgence of Mr.
Ramsay) she becomes more strongly conscious of her own role and consciously
works for the equilibrium that is momentarily lost, she is actually making and
exercise of introspection that project outside herself to the world for
everybody's benefit. Actually she is herself the equilibrium. But, on the other
hand, we could say that the position of Mrs. Ramsay will never reach the end of
the dialectics between «vulnerability» and «social impositions» since she is
solving problems one to one, not the structure itself (which she is actually
reinforcing). Then, we have the character of Lily, really an outsider that,
again, tries to explore her own vulnerability to enquire into the cause and
perhaps to reach an end for it. Lily does not want to solve a specific problem,
but to solve causality; such a determination would be more difficult to assume
by Mrs. Ramsay who, against Lily, has her own place/role in the world. The
place/role for Lily is (momentarily at least) more indefinite (she is, I said
already, an «outsider») and then she is better able to exploit the possibilities
of her vulnerability, to an extent that goes beyond just patching things

I think both characters (Mrs. Ramsay and Lily) are, in either case,
good practical examples of the concept and possibilities of «vulnerability» in
the sense Judith Butler use this term.